OBSRVTNS

IF IT’S NOT LOVE, IT’S THE BOMB: A group called Women on Waves, travels to different areas on Europe where abortion is illegal or greatly restricted to provide non-surgical abortions (in pill form), usually by sea. This week they announced they are going to use drone technology to fly abortion pills from Germany into Poland where abortions are illegal in cases except for rape or incest.

I’ve always had trouble with the “except in cases of rape” clause in abortion laws. If you’re willing to allow abortion in cases of rape, you’re saying that some life IS more valuable than others, which seems to go against the major tenet of “pro-life” supporters which is that all fetuses alive and all fetuses deserve equal protection under the law. IDK. I’m kind of OCD though, it’s hard for me to hold contrary philosophical principals at the same time…

For a look at what happens to children born in nations where abortion access is severely restricted or illegal, look at this heart wrenching profile on Romanian orphanages. The footage taken in the 90s looks like something out of a death camp:

LET’S GET GAY MARRIED: Same-sex marriage was finally made a federal right by the Supreme Court.

Justice Kennedy’s response is one that will probably go on to be a precedent for rulings regarding constitutional amendments:

“The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times,” he wrote on Friday. “The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.”

The afternoon the decision was announced, it a kind of serendipity a huge rainbow cloud appeared in the sky over Highland Park. The phenomenon is rare and called a “fire rainbow” and the conditions required to produce it are precise: http://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/05/fire-rainbows-rare-cloud-phenomenon.html …but still, God likes to guarantee promises with rainbows, if you’re into that sort of thing.

AMAZING GRACE: The president arrived in Charleston to deliver a powerful eulogy and he even sang, shaky and off-key in a vulnerable moment that became more poignant by the fiery recitation of the names of the victims of the Charleston shooting that was delivered with the vigor of a Charismatic pastor.

YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT: Our bodies are full of shit and in that shit are microbes that come together to form a microbiome. Mark Lyte is a scientist who’s been trying to prove that that microbiome communicates with our nervous system using the same neurochemicals that are in our brain. “Somehow micro-organisms in the gut tickle a sensory nerve ending in the fingerlike protrusion lining the intestine and carry that electrical impulse up the vagus nerve and into the deep-brain structures thought to be responsible for elemental emotions like anxiety.”

BOSS BITCHES OF HISTORY: Along with Ela Darling, I’m the creator, writer and co-star of a new history show on the Wisecrack Channel on Youtube.com! The show profiles Boss Bitches throughout history using animation, humor and our rapier wits. Get the fuck into it.